The tale of 2 Stones & a Couple of Pebbles

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Victory – Ah

A few weeks ago we took our first family trip since Audrey’s diagnosis back in February. The idea of travelling has felt incredibly overwhelming for me and to be honest, fear had up until that point overtaken any desire I’d had to go away.

The idea of trying to safely feed her and make a trip enjoyable felt near impossible. I’ve finally come to the place where I feel like our home, though a dual kitchen (gluten AND gluten free products served here) is a safe place for our girl. I prepare the food, I clean/scrub the kitchen, I’m constantly hunting crumbs & reading labels. I know how to avoid cross contamination and ultimately, here…

I’m in control.

The trouble with life is that we’re never really truly in control. God is. Just ask the weatherman, every time he thinks he has it “all figured out” God’s like BOOM you said sunshine? Here’s rain! Control is a figment of our imagination and truthfully, the thing that holds us back the most.

At least, the pursuit of that control is what holds me back.

So, I decided to let go (a little) of it and plan a family trip. I spent hours and hours and hours researching cities to travel to. Predominantly Corey & I wanted to either go “home” to Kelowna or back to “our city”, Victoria. They are the two places in this beautiful province that our little family love the most.

It turned out that of the two not only was Victoria the city with accommodations still available (I could find NOTHING in Kelowna) but it’s rated as one of the safest cities in BC for a Celiac to travel to – score!

After contacting many hotels, I got in contact with the staff at the Delta Victoria Ocean Pointe hotel. The resident reservations specialist Kyra that helped us out was phenomenal! Not only did she help us book a room, but she sent us information about where would be safe to eat with Audrey, including maps. She had the hotel restaurant manager contact us with all the required information about the gluten free menu and she even stayed late one day to talk with me on the phone, answering all my questions.

I spent the days coming up to our trip planning, list writing, cooking and preparing. I knew what meals we were going to eat out, and had spoken with the head chef or restaurant managers of each of those locations. I’d also packed enough food to prepare many of our meals in our hotel room (something I always have to do for) confident that we could make this work.

And we did!

We arrived at our hotel to find out the Kyra had not only taken care of our needs pre-trip but she’d gone way above and beyond, heading over to Origin bakery, a very popular gluten free bakery in Victoria to purchase Gluten Free (Corn Free) cookies for our girls to find on their arrival, and left them with a beautiful hand written note. The look on BOTH girls faces was enough to give this mama tears. (ps. this isn’t a sponsored post, I just want to share the good things we experienced!)

We shopped, we played at a really awesome park Corey remembered, they swam, I hit the hotel gym(!), we got caught in a thunderstorm & INTENSE downpour, we visited the museum and we laughed. We ate pizza in bed and took silly pictures, because that’s what we do.

More than anything we enjoyed being a family, and life felt normal.

The four of us needed that trip, we needed to just be able to be a family and to spend time doing the fun things, forgetting about everything else.

Life is moving by at lightning speed, our girls are growing up too fast & while I can’t stop those things from happening, I am making sure to enjoy each one of these moments as they happen.